iTunes Changing Genres/Artwork at Random?

Hi alhb.

OK, the randomness of the changes plus the fact that you are not able to edit metadata for content purchased from the iTunes Store and downloaded points to the likelihood of this being a corruption of the actual .itl iTunes Library file. There are a couple of options.

1) If you are backing up the Mac mini to Time Machine, you can restore that file from a point before this became an issue.

2) If you do not have a backup, the best approach will be to force the creation of a new .itl file.

If you are using Time Machine, you'll need to navigate to the folder that contains the .itl file before launching Time Machine. In general, you should find that by going to the Music folder in the main user account and inside that there should be a folder called iTunes and the library file should be inside of that.

Use Time Machine to restore deleted files or older files - Apple Support

If Time Machine is not an option, then try these steps:

1) Create a copy of the current .itl file just as a failsafe. You can do this by either right-clicking or Control-clicking on the current .itl file and choosing Duplicate and then putting the duplicate file in a location outside of the iTunes folder or you can even use something like a USB thumb drive and drag and drop the file on to that. (While your actual media library is quite large, the .itl file itself if not going to be more than 1 GB at the outside.)

2) Launch iTunes whilst holding down the Option key. This will present you with an option to open an alternate library or create a new one. Choose the option to create a new library. This will create a new, empty .itl file.

3) Use the Import or Add To Library command under the File menu in iTunes (this will depend on what version of macOS and what version of iTunes you are running) and then navigate to the drive that contains the actual media files. The next bit will depend on how the media files are organized. If they are in nested folders, you may have to do this multiple times. If all shows are in one folder then you just need to open that folder and select the contents.

Use multiple iTunes libraries on Mac - Apple Support

Once the import is complete, you should see a fresh library with at least most of the metadata correct. I say most because changes made to metadata for individual titles while the old library file was corrupted may not have "stuck" and you may need to do some adjusting.

Cheers.

Hello alhb and welcome to Apple Support Communities.

I see you are having quite a frustrating issue with metadata for TV shows you've added to iTunes being changed on you without your input. This data includes both genre listings and cover art.

You say that you primarily use iTunes for movies and TV shows. When it comes to music, is there an active subscription to Apple Music or iTunes Match involved? It sounds like what may be happening is that genre and cover info may be being changed to what is in the iTunes Store and an active connection to a service where that would be expected for music may be affecting your issue with TV show metadata.

Cheers.

Hi alhb.

No, you should be able to choose multiple files at the same time as long as they are in the same folder. Just click the top one on the list and then, whilst holding the shift key, click the last item in the list and it should do the same thing with multiple files at the same time.

Cheers.

Hi alhb.

Very glad to hear I was able to help you get this sorted. As someone with a very large iTunes library (who has also not made the jump to Catalina), I very much understand the distress that this kind of metadata issue can cause. Have a brilliant rest of your day.

Cheers.